I’m not an audiophile. I love great sound and I know enough about audio production to be dangerous but I’ve never bought a gold reference CD of Rachmaninoff nor do I rail against the MP3 like Neil Young.
But I now know what I’ve been missing.
(more…)As a father of three, I know kids love headphones. My youngest is currently running around the house with an iPod nano and a pair of cans he found somewhere in my office. The question is whether or not he’s destroying his hearing right now, and I suspect he is.
(more…)eBay has a great deal on our favorite noise-canceling headphones, the Sony WH1000XM3. Given these things are usually $350, the $180 deal on these refurb models is great.
(more…)Bose is shutting all of its stores in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia, leaving 130 stores in Asia and UAE open for now. The Bose stores have long been one of the first places consumers learned about Bose’s good-but-not-great products and it looks like online sales and the slow-moving retail apocalypse is taking down another niche player.
(more…)Truly, you are spoiled for choice when it comes to looking for a pair of headphones. Do you want over-the-ear, on ear, or in-ear? Do you want a wired connection, or bluetooth? And with bluetooth, do you want the headphones connected, or in a “true wireless” guise? It’s that latter category – true wireless – that I’ve been exploring with the Audio Technica ATH-CK3TW.
(more…)Graphene is great for audio. It’s a light material and offers exquisite audio performance when formed correctly. The folks at Ora-Sound have figured it out.
Their new GraphenEQ headphones look like fairly typical wireless headphones. They have a nice tapered design and spacious ear cups. But when you turn them on you find out what graphene headphones can really do.
(more…)We’ve brought a number of new headphones to your attention lately, and it’s something that I’ve been looking at more closely as well. I use headphones daily (one pair at the gym, and then a wired headset at the office for calls), so I must be thinking about something new. I’m a fan of solar charging, so these new JBL Reflect Eternal cans are definitely a curiousity.
(more…)When you first look at the Meze 99 Classics you’re immediately brought back to the days of rich, wooden stereo cases and delicately filigreed radio screens. The 99s are some of the best looking – and best – headphones we’ve used in a while and wearing them is a surprising treat.
(more…)Just earlier this week, I had a roundup of some light and sound options for your home entertainment needs. Well, what if you take your entertainment on-the-go? Well, then that’s where our pals over at Audio-Technica come in. Today, we’ll give you a quick run-down of some of what they’ve got up on the shelf.
(more…)As a new convert to higher-end audio gear, I was curious about headphone pre-amps and DACs. While I haven’t yet dropped $5,000 on a set of speaker cables, I am willing to give some things a try.
My first purchase? An Asgard 2 from Schiit Audio. First introduced in 2013, this headphone amp and pre-amp does one thing and does it well: you plug in your regular outputs – be they a computer or audio system or whatever – and listen to the sound on headphones. A pair of RCA outputs on the back let you pump the sound into powered speakers and a simple switch sets the gain – either 6db or 18db.
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